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From May 20 through June 3rd, there is to be no discussion of US politics. All existing threads on the subject will be closed. People can start new ones once the hiatus is over. See the thread in Trouble Tickets for more info.

Registered User

Five long years... it’s hard to believe you’ve made it this far in tact... well mostly in tact...

Five years after the Crash no one is really the same or whole anymore. Everyone’s got baggage now, even those in the Recession. Everyone got damaged. You got people you care for though and you’re doing your damndest trying to keep them safe, to shield them from the horrors, to take their unfelt suffering upon yourself so that in the end maybe they can be safe... maybe.

***************

​

Five years... damn...

Middling away to pay rent, eat, try to keep up with maintaining your gear. This place you’ve managed to find and be accepted into, Sky High they call it, was some honest to god enclave before these things became the new big post-Crash way to survive. It was devoted to astronomy and stargazing, and hell, people still do it as a past time. The smaller observatories are still accessible and it’s a nice release to look up at the heavens on crisp clear evenings and just forget about all of those empty cities and biting, rotting faces.

It’s a real nice place to have nestled into, pretty relaxed environment, Strange management, a beautiful location, and they even managed to put up some solid defenses not least of which is that it’s all built up the side of a mountain.

These folks might have given up and decided to cash in on their identity, to accept their lot and just exist; to toil and struggle. That’s all fine and dandy, but you want more; for yourself, and for those you care about. After five years though not even a nice place like Sky High can keep you wanting to stay here in the Loss. But it turns out you got with a group whom all agree that the Recession ain’t their bag either.

So here you are in a nice place, but a nice place won’t cut it.
What you really need is a great place, and you’re going to make it happen. Right here. You’re going to make Sky High great.

***************​

On this warm and sunny spring afternoon in The Grove, down by the fence, by a beat up old VW bus, with the smell of poppies and marijuana in the air, you find yourself looking across an old messy card table at your crew mates.
Worn down pencils, wrinkled budgeting sheets weighted down by stones, and a messy pile of freshly claimed driver’s licenses and IDs lay strewn about the ragged surface between the four of you.

Each of the assembled members of Peace, Love, and Undertaking have a plan of their own... regardless of what each has in mind, they’re investing in the future, in this place they’ve learned to call ‘home’. They’ve get plans alright, and they’re going to need each other to pull it all off... it’s time to score big and either get rich or die trying...

***************​

OOC: Hey folks! IC! So this is the establishing shot of your characters settling on a tontine.
Give us a picture of what your characters look like, keep in mind this is post job: what they wear, hair color/style, skin color/ethnicity, and any distinguishing marks or mannerisms.

It’s not exactly what a tontine is but the idea is there. You’re all agreeing that none of you are retiring until each of you are set and ready to roll as a crew.

We start this scene sort of at the end really, where you’re all figuring out what to call your last job you’ll do together. Your characters have just finished planning it, Mr. JOLS, Just One Last Score, but the details aren’t important now.
What is important is what they call this planned score of mythic level bounty.

This catchy little name will be your crew’s driving force. When things are looking down it’s what you say to each other to keep on going.
While it might not get decided upon IC immediately this is a great way to get some group rp and banter in. If we can’t agree on a name this scene might fade to black and we finish it up in OOC. No worries.
Just remember,
It’s your way out of this life. It’s freedom. It’s power. It’s your call to arms.
It’s safety for those that you love.

RPGnet Newsletter Editor

Collar reaches up with a thin, almost scrawny hand and scrubs at the new growth of beard on his face. His lanky legs, clad in battered black work pants, are crossed in front of him as he's pushed back from the table a bit. His signature clerical collar shines out from a black, short-sleeve Carhartt work shirt - not exactly standard clerical vestments, but it's a fair attempt to re-create the effect.

The broad-brimmed hat that he uses to keep the top of his bald pale head from burning in the Southwestern sun is hanging off the back of his chair, along with his backpack and other gear.

He lets out a deep breath, almost a sigh, looking over the plans on the table. "God willing, this might work. It seems more likely that we will all die, though."

OOC: I don't have any great inspiration for the JOLS name at the moment.

One Shot Man

Dean grins at the old priest. "Every man dies, but not every man truly lives. Was it Jesus or Conan who said that?" Dean is a big bald African American guy wearing worn work pants and a denim vest. After turning Latent, his skin faded from rich chocolate to ashen grey with black lines of sinew here and there making his status obvious to anyone with eyes to see, even if he didn't have "LATENT AND PROUD" stenciled on front and back of his vest. He tops it off with a big cross pendant and a black cowboy hat. His forehead glistens with sweat from the heat.

"Anyway, I asked Pops what you'd call something that changes everything about the way you look at life, and he said 'Stephen Hawking', so I suggest we call this plan "Hawking", or "the Hawk", or "Steve." Sounds cool, and people won't know what we're talking about. If we go around talking about our retirement plan or get-rich-quick scheme or whatever, we'll get dry-gulched by those Co-Op bastards. We talk about our buddy Steve, nobody cares." He takes a small, judicious sip from his canteen and screws the cap back on. It's way too easy to drink up all your profits out here without ever touching a drop of whiskey or beer.

Registered User

The owner of said VW bus, which also happened to be his home, took another puff of the nearly spent spliff he was holding between his fingers, and exhaled slowly. His shoulder-length blonde hair is held back by a bandana, and his unkempt beard is almost as long. His eyes are framed by two round glasses, and he is wearing a rather lurid flower-pattern shirt that leaves his arms exposed with a pair of shorts made from ripped jeans. He is rather tall, athletically built, and being a man in his prime at 25 he looks like he has done a lot of running. A whole lot of it, in fact.

Somewhere inside his home, if you asked him he would guess under the pile of discarded clothes and blankets that he used as a bed (Currently occupied by his groupie/girlfriend/band mate, sleeping the afternoon away), was an old pair of medical scrubs. Still attached to these scrubs is an ID belonging to a smiling young man with the same glasses, but clean shaven and much tidier hair. That young man was called Hunter Rhodes, and he had been a naive medical student that had signed up for the emergency aid mission that had gone west during the spread of the Blight. That man was effectively dead now, his hopefulness and faith in the medical profession having crumpled in the face of its sheer inability to do anything about the plague sweeping the world. Nothing had worked, and all he had received for it was a bite and an inexplicable immunity.

Hunter wandered the Loss after the rest of his aid mission had died in that C attack, surviving on his wits and medical training. He eventually ran into a group of neo-hippies and had been intrigued by their theory that the blight was the bad mojo humanity had created with it's actions, the physical embodiment of the greed and warmongering and hatred that infected modern society. Hunter was a guy full of good vibrations, they said, and that was probably why he was immune. That sounded scientifically dubious to say the least, but science had so far done little to explain the Blight, and trying to spread the love around seemed like a good idea in this darkest of times, so Hunter had said "Why the Hell not?" And having found solace in the ways of free love, Moonchild was born.

Of course they had exiled him after one of them tried to kill him for the bounty on Immunes, and Moonchild had been forced to blow his brains out with a shotgun, but he had soon found his way to Sky High and established himself as a valuable if rather unorthodox member of the community. And Moonchild would have been happy to spend the rest of his life there with his girlfriend, were it not for a piece of news that had come his way from his family back home.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, he turned himself back to the reality sitting on the table before him. "One last job, then we get the fuck outta here..."

He paused, look at his spliff, then couldn't help but giggle a little. "How about 'Let's Blow This Joint?'"

RPGnet Newsletter Editor

Dean grins at the old priest. "Every man dies, but not every man truly lives. Was it Jesus or Conan who said that?" Dean is a big bald African American guy wearing worn work pants and a denim vest. After turning Latent, his skin faded from rich chocolate to ashen grey with black lines of sinew here and there making his status obvious to anyone with eyes to see, even if he didn't have "LATENT AND PROUD" stenciled on front and back of his vest. He tops it off with a big cross pendant and a black cowboy hat. His forehead glistens with sweat from the heat.

"Anyway, I asked Pops what you'd call something that changes everything about the way you look at life, and he said 'Stephen Hawking', so I suggest we call this plan "Hawking", or "the Hawk", or "Steve." Sounds cool, and people won't know what we're talking about. If we go around talking about our retirement plan or get-rich-quick scheme or whatever, we'll get dry-gulched by those Co-Op bastards. We talk about our buddy Steve, nobody cares." He takes a small, judicious sip from his canteen and screws the cap back on. It's way too easy to drink up all your profits out here without ever touching a drop of whiskey or beer.

Registered User

The shot pulls away from The Grove as the crew of Peace, Love, and Undertaking debate the name of their future last score.

As the scene fades to black we see some kind of agreement as everyone puts their hands in together save for Dean who nods with a grin. Collar then leans forward drawing in the pile of IDs and begins dealing them out like some morbid game of poker...

***************​

~Days later...,

After a few days back from the last job, reconnecting with loved ones, pissing away bounty on drinks and relaxation, tending to wounds, and reconnecting with the faithful it’s time for more work.

The nagging indescribable itch of needing to make bounty is on each of your minds. That and Mr. JOLS... you all committed to one another and it was time to start making good on that.

But first, you need to find some work, to pay the bills now and hopefully score enough scratch to start saving for later...

OOC: We aren’t going to do any proper vignettes just yet. That will be for the downtime between this job and the next.

After negotiating this job I will have each of you do a disembarking scene with one or more of your dependents. That’s for later though, so for now let’s do some prep work!

The way this works is each of you gets one Prep Work roll. You’ll pick some approach to how your Taker chooses to find some work or info on currently active jobs. Pick the approach, narrate what happens, and make the roll. If you need to buy a roll with a charge or use additional charges with Charged gear mention it so that can be adjusted on your sheets in the wiki.

These are one and done rolls, however you can always flip with Will (wouldn’t recommend that) *or* create a Reference. As everyone currently has all of their References open no Networking roll will be required. If you do tap a Reference though that person will become Needy and will require a bounty after you’re paid (Or not! You don’t *have* to pay them back. There’s a mechanical effect to that but it’s not important at the moment).

You can find out one of four things:
-What contracts are available?
**With a successful check you can discover one contract.

-What does a contract likely require?
**With a successful check you can learn more info about a contract. This is made up of rumors and such so it could be accurate or maybe less so but it at least gives you a better idea of what’s going on.

-What is the equilibrium price of a contract?
**With a successful check you can learn the at-value payout of a specific contract.

-What competition is bidding for a specific contract?
**With a successful check you can learn if another Taker group will be undercutting a specific job and who it might be.

Feel free to discuss this in the OOC chat if you’d like as a sort of strategic planning phase or do it in-Character. This game definitely encourages out of character planning type chatter.

The other option as opposed to pursuing a contract is to plan a Score. It can potentially have a bigger payout but none of the overhead is paid for. So that means there’s no negotiating for break points, hazard pay, 100% markup, or equipment costs. Depending on your potential for max haul and the price of the goods you can make a sizable amount of bounty though.

RPGnet Newsletter Editor

Knowing that they'll need to get some Bounty to cover expenses while they prepare for Mr. JOLS, Collar hops onto LifeLines using his Ubiq specs to find out what open contracts are available.

OOC:
Orokos doesn't have a Red Markets macro, so I'm just going to roll 1d10; 1d10 and call the first die Black, second die Red. I'll use the same format for all rolls going forward unless someone comes up with a more efficient one.

Registered User

Collar discovers a person on the LifeLines forums going by the very imaginative handle, ‘Hacker’.

They’re looking for a crew to retrieve data from an office building.

OOC: Mark a charge off your specs (or 2 if it’s Hungry). While I made the wiki code char sheet I’m really liking playing around with google sheets. Expect a link to a multi page (one page per Taker) spreadsheet to track gear charges, damage, and threats in the near future.

I will also let you all know that there are more jobs available besides this one.

With followup prep you can learn some more info about this job: equilibrium value, more info, or competition.
Otherwise you can attempt to discover other work available.

Registered User

Moonchild,
Some day shortly after the tontine agreement Will Daws approaches you while you’re at a machine in the Workshop.

Will is a soft guy of about 6’ and in his mid-40s. Real smart, a mechanical engineer pre-Crash, and he has been the leading designer of many of the innovations in Sky High.

You can barely hear a voice as you work the lathe, the sound muffled through your earplugs.

“****CHILD!! Ah hey! Moonchild right? You’re with Collar’s group correct? Listen I think I have a job for you guys. When you get some time to talk come and meet me at my place.
It’s about the Workshop but anyway thanks for your time man, I’ll let you get back to it.
That table leg is looking good by the way!”, he gives you a big smile and a thumbs up as you put your earplugs back in.